Charles Angelich wrote in a message to Wayne Chirnside:

WC> I've looked over www.pricewatch.com, just an example plenty of 
WC> other sources, and they have some good bare bones deals on high 
WC> powered systems. True most of the motherboards have onboard video  
WC> and sound but they also have provisions for adding your choice of 
WC> video card and a goodly number of open slots on the better 
WC> motherboards. 

CA> The problem isn't when the mb is new, it's later if/when the sound
CA> or video goes out and you need to disable it. On my COMPAQ here 
CA> both sound and vid went bad and the required dip switch did disable 
CA> them but I am told on other systems what is _supposed_ to disable 
CA> it doesn't always hide it from the BIOS and things get complicated 
CA> trying to put in vid/sound cards to replace the bad onboard 
CA> circuits. :-\ 

That's exactly the sort of thing that first put a bad taste in my mouth
with regard to all that built-in stuff.  A guy I knew had a 386 MB, 
current technology at that time,  and the IDE interface went bad.  *Really*
bad.  You could go into setup and disable it,  but a card plugged in
wouldn't work at all...

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